The word stalwart may as well have been invented for Mudhoney. Born out of the famous Sub Pop Seattle Grunge sound that dominated the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the band are still going, still making high quality records and still, for want of a better phrase, rockin' and rollin'.

The guys played a show at London's KOKO last Sunday, and we caught up with (mostly) frontman Mark Arm and (some of) guitarist Steve Turner beforehand, to talk changing attitudes, day jobs, the music industry and, most importantly fuzz boxes.

DiS: How've the shows been going so far?

Mark Arm: They’ve been really good...we had the The Vaselines opening for us up in Edinburgh...

DiS: How were they? Had you played together before?

MA: Only at Sub Pop 20 a year ago. They’re great, we’re big fans. We’ve been big fans for a long time.

DiS: I saw them down the road at the Forum in March, there was a huge mixture of faces, old and young. How do you find the mix at your shows?

MA: Yeah. We seem to hold onto some of the old farts and pick up new kids along the way. I don’t know...I’m not wearing my glasses so everybody looks much younger than they are.

DiS: Probably a better way to go...

MA: Ha, yeah.

DiS: The current tour’s quite a big one...

MA: It’s a big tour for us, but a really small tour for a regular band...

DiS: What have your touring schedules been like over the last few years? Since I was about 16 you’ve come over and played a few shows and then finished...

MA: Yeah, well, it seemed like we kind of came to the UK pretty regularly up til 1995. Then we played the Reading Festival where, in the programme, they gave us a poor preview which is really funny because you think “you’ve paid us all this money...” but we were pretty far up on the bill, still but by ’95 people were kinda over it and a lot of people tend to view music as fashion. So that was just one of the hits that you take. We came over in ’98 to test the waters again to play one show at The Garage and there was no press whatsoever, no ads, but the show was sold out and it was super fun. But that was the first show where we noticed, y’know, kids dressed in flannel and wearing Nirvana shirts and thought “ahhhhhh OK, that’s weird”...

DiS: Yeah, how different is it over here to the States for things like that? I guess there’s a convergence to a degree...

MA: I don’t find it similar. I think there are general pockets of places that are kind of similar – you can say the UK is sort of similar, you can say Spain is similar...and Italy. It’s similar yet different, like snowflakes or fingerprints, they’re all fingerprints. All roughly the same but there’s nuances...

DiS: Is it something you’ll ever tire of, playing shows?

MA: I’m gonna get tired this tour...I already am tired and we’ve only played two shows, but I won’t get tired of touring ...we don’t do it enough. For us, well for me at least, it just feels like a release after just months of hanging around home.

DiS: Have you all got day jobs now then?

MA: I do.

DiS: You work in the Sub Pop warehouse, right?

MA: That’s correct! You’ve done your homework.

DiS: Does it feel like a holiday now to some extent? I mean, I guess it’s still work...

MA: Yeah, y’know, to claim being in a band is work, c’mon, BLOW ME! It’s like models saying “it’s so much work going down the catwalk...” [laughs] “sometimes I have to stand round and get photographed for eight hours a day!”...

DiS: What about the other guys? Steve, Mark, Dan?

MA: Guy [Maddison, bassist] has the most real job of all of us. He works in Harbour View, which is a major trauma hospital in Seattle. He’s a nurse pretty high up there. Dan is a purely stay at home dad, but he takes care of three kids and Steve is somewhere in between – takes care of the kids and also does a lot...I guess his job is going to a lot of second hand shops and finding a lot of records that he might be able to sell on eBay...

DiS: As a hobby to make a bit of extra money from?

MA: It’s not a hobby, he’s just a scrounger! He’s a scavenger, a cultural scavenger.

DiS: You’re playing a lot of places in Europe soon, Warsaw, Vienna...etc. Have you played these places in the past?

MA: We’ve been to Vienna a bunch, but we’ve never been to Warsaw. And we’re going to Slovenia which we’ve never been to and Croatia, too. We’ve been to Prague one time, we did a fly-in show. It was up until very recently to say we’ve done a show on the other side of the continent.

DiS: Are you intrigued to see the difference between the West and the old East, as it were?

MA: I guess we’ll see this time because we’ll actually be going overland to see what the roads are like and the infrastructure. ‘Cos when you just fly-in to Prague you don’t see the whole beautiful city that wasn't bombed in World War II.

DiS: What’s the process like as a band now with writing new songs. Are you writing any new stuff?

MA: It comes in dribs and drabs, sometimes there’s like a month where three or four songs get written. Usually someone brings in a riff or a drumbeat and then we’ll work from there. Sometimes someone has a more fully-formed idea like a couple of parts...but it’s pretty rare that someone comes in fully realised. We work together as a band, we’re pretty much a democracy.

DiS: You didn’t play guitar on The Lucky Ones, is that something you prefer?

MA: It’s easier not having a guitar to dick around with. Especially when you’re travelling, going through airports. I do a bit more dancing, if you can call it that...

DiS: 21 years is a pretty long time as a band, are there any moments which you regret or would have done differently? I mean, you’ve been around as long now as the Ramones were, pretty much...

MA: Even the mistakes were a learning experience and things I had to go through. So, those things are what made me the person I am today which I’m perfectly happy with. Y’know, I’m not some self-loathing bitter old fuck, so I’d have to say no.

DiS: Is there anything, conversely, that you didn’t think was that great at the time but now in retrospect. I guess the whole process earlier on must’ve been a lot more condensed...

MA: Early on it seemed...you can get into, I don’t know if it’s a rut, but a schedule where you think “you’ve gotta do something now, we’re gonna have this record out” and I think maybe that kind of thinking sometimes makes things suffer. But y’know, there are bands in the ‘60s and ‘70s that would put out two records a year...Love It To Death and Killer by Alice Cooper both came out in the same year!.

DiS: How different is being on the road now to 15-20 years ago?

MA: We did a couple of bus tours around ‘95 – that was the only couple of times that we were on a bus...

DiS: Do you get to choose your support acts for the shows you play now?

MA: We chose The Heads [Playing London] and The Vaselines. On the continent we’re just going to playing with whoever, I don’t know what’s happening over there [laughs]. Sometimes we’ve brought friends’ bands with us...

DiS: How much do you stay in touch with new music? Any bands you're digging at the moment?

MA: Y’know, I don’t have my ear to the ground the way I once did. There was a time when I had a fanzine, worked in a local college radio station and just felt like I really knew what was happening. It’s been a while since I felt that...At this point, so much of what Mudhoney does is going out, hanging out in venues, playing and waiting for the show to happen that, when I’m home, pretty much the last thing I wanna do is go to a bar and hang out there. Even if it’s a band I know that I really, really want to see – the part that’s before the bands, between the bands or a shitty opening band, that just fucking kills me. Just sucks the life out of me. And making weird, goofy small talk to people, I don’t really enjoy that, I’m not good at it, I always feel like...anything beyond “hi, how’re you doing?”...if it could end there, that’d be great!

DiS: Are there any bands you’ve played with that you’d not heard before...like I dunno...Fuck Buttons, they’re kind of fuzzy and playing the ATP you’re playing in December?

MA: I have to say I’m not familiar with them, and they haven’t slipped me their demo as far as I know...

DiS: What about any older bands you played with at festivals that you hung out with back when? Obviously you're playing the My Bloody Valentine ATP...[Ed - actually it's the 10 Years ATP!]

MA: We’ve hung out with My Bloody Valentine and had good times with them. I remember a very drunken and fucked up night in Copenhagen. Well, remember is a loose way to describe it, anyway...

How would you say your influences have changed over the last 5, 10 or even 15 years?

MA: They’ve broadened. And I think that getting older, the scope of the things that you listen to broadens as well. I can say that something like – even though you’re not gonna hear it in our music at all – honestly, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane have been a huge influence, but you’re not going to hear that in Mudhoney.

DiS: I don’t know how much coverage there is in the US about the changing music industry with regard to illegal downloads and streaming but it gets a lot of coverage over here...there’s a new service out now where you can stream...

MA: Spotify?

DiS: Yeah, are you aware of that?

MA: I am, only because I work at Sub Pop and my friend Andy works in that part of the label which deals with that stuff, so he’s been listening to it and checking it out for a couple of months now. He thinks it’s amazing, but he also thinks it’s a pretty big game changer. To me it works kinda like radio because you can’t download it, but you can hear pretty much anything so that’s pretty great. There are some people who are always going to be not super-attached to the music they listen to, if it’s on in the background or whatever, but there are other people that, once they listen to the music, something clicks with them, then they’re gonna become collectors. It’s just part of human nature which goes back to the time when people were hoarding food. There’s the drive to collect tea-cups or whatever which just pops up – it’s a fucking part of a lizard brain which is a primal thing that people do...it’s something I feel I need to move away from...be more Gandhi about it [laughs]!

DiS: If you can!

MA: Yeah, that’s pretty high bar...but I think if someone’s going to listen to Spotify and something clicks with them then they’re going to chase down the LP or something.

DiS: Yeah, I guess if people want the record they’ll get the record...you can’t stick Spotify on in the car on a three-hour drive or whatever [at the moment, anyway...]

MA: And you can’t just hold the album...and that’s the one thing that’s neat about the interest in vinyl these days...

[Steve Turner walks in... ]

ST: Do you need help?!

MA: You can come in, if you want!

...[continues] and get into the liner notes and the production credits...when you just download something you don’t know where it was made, who it was made by, you might not even know who is in the band...

DiS: Yeah, I guess it can feel a bit hollow. For example a lot of ways I’ve gotten into bands has been through looking at the credits and sleeve notes and see what bands are mentioned...4/5 a band might be rubbish but...

DiS: Do you think, with the music industry the way it is now, that you’d have been able to be as ‘successful’ as you have been?

MA: If we’d have come in as a new band now...

ST: We’d be better looking than we are now...that would help...

MA: Orrr....not. We might still be the same age.

ST: Oooh...But it’s hard to really imagine what it’d have been like, because if we’d have been coming through now we’d have been keyed in to different things. I still think there’s a lot of great stuff happening in the underground but I don’t know what type we’d have been drawn to, so I don’t know what we’d have ended up like, individually or collectively...

MA:We’re kind of a product of our time and place.

ST: We’re hardcore kids that grew out of hardcore and y’know, Dinosaur Jr. All sorts of people in the same place.

MA: Well, hardcore...that terms been used to mean all sorts of things since then...

ST: The first wave of hardcore...like...

DiS: Dead Kennedys?

MA: Dead Kennedys...

ST: Minor Threat, Black Flag...

MA: I mean, Dead Kennedys sort of seemed like they were adults...

ST: Dead Kennedys weren’t kids, no, but we were the generation for which Minor Threat were the gods, when everyone wrote letters to everyone else around the country to ask how their scene was going...JFA...

DiS: One final question...do you get any royalties from Electro Harmonix and Univox?! Maybe you should look into that!

MA: No...

ST: Electro Harmonix gave you a bunch of boxes...

MA: Yeah. We didn’t get royalties but I managed to contact someone...

ST: You got a crapload of things!

MA: Yeah, I heard that the band Fu Manchu had gotten sponsored by them and I thought “are you fucking me?!”, if Fu Manchu can get stuff from Electro Harmonix we should be able to! So I contacted someone and I was able to get...she sent five things for me and then from that point if we wanted anything then it would have been cost...

DiS: Are you still using a similar set-up as always?

ST: Yeah, I still use a Big Muff. The funny thing about that, though, is that Fu Manchu’s bass player now runs a fuzzbox company! He makes some killer stuff! I’m also still endeared about fuzz boxes...I have friends that make them for me and some of the smaller companies. I used this one thing which blew my mind recently. It’s from a company called Death By Audio called Fuzz War. It is the, I think, greatest thing I’ve ever heard...

Yeah?

ST: It’s sounds like a FUCKING fuzz war...it’s perfect!

MA: [laughs maniacally]

ST: We were at a guitar shop the other day and I did the comparison thing. We laid out all these different microbrand fuzzboxes and Fuzz War decimated all of them...I’m working on sponsorship with these guys!

DiS: A weapon of fuzz destruction!

ST: Totally, it’s amazing. I don’t have it with me but I should’ve
brought it along.

DiS: It’s something you still mess around with though?

ST: Like I say I went to a guitar shop the other day and played like 30 different fuzz boxes! So, I still mess around. But Live, I’m pretty dialled in.

MA: I’m down to two boxes – the distortion box and a 1960s fuzz.

ST: Every time I get more boxes in the live line-up they break. More boxes, more things to break...

MA: We did this show in New York and when we were doing our soundcheck, Danny our guitar technician overheard one of the guys working saying “that’s refreshing, he’s got two boxes, one that goes ‘errrrrrrrrr’ and one that goes ‘eurrrrrrrr’.”! [laughs]. It’s a slightly different ‘errrrrrrrrrrrrr’!

Mudhoney continue their tour throughout Europe in the next month. Dates are here. They've also re-issued three of their best records - Superfuzz Bigmuff, Mudhoney and Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge - on vinyl on October 5.